April 28, 2006

April 27, 2006

If you have not been following Wonderboy's adventures, you might be wondering what the big deal is about that. He turned two in December, can walk and climb stairs, and enjoys trying to jump. But his particular developmental delays (a combination of several factors including high muscle tone, poor motor planning, hearing loss, and other issues) have caused him to have peculiar gaps in his gross motor skills. He cannot sit up from a lying-down position (neither belly nor back), and until today, he had never managed to stand up without assistance.

But today, during one of their typical roughhouse/practice sessions, Scott put the Boy on his belly, and to our delight and his own jubilation, Wonderboy pushed up onto his knees, and then slowly, with great effort, continued pushing until he was on his feet, hands still touching the floor. He rocked backward a bit, found his balance, shifted his hands one at a time to his knees—and straightened up. And broke into a thousand-watt grin. And cheered and laughed and stomped his feet.

Hosted by Education Wonk. I found this piece on a Maryland private school particularly interesting. Fairhaven operates on the Sudbury model, but the blog piece by Matt Johnston doesn't mention Sudbury or explore the tenets of a Sudbury/unschooling education. Johnston has doubts as to whether Fairhaven's students are receiving any kind of an education at all:

But the problem with this style of progressive educational model is that it is based on the whims of children, a notoriously shifting footing for a school to operate.

Experience is a wonderful teacher, but without guided reflection, without guided experience, nothing is learned from experience and no one can learn from the experiences of others. Afterall, you can't keep reinventing the wheel and then expect to build a spaceship.

Unschoolers and Sudbury advocates would argue that "guided reflection" does occur for these students, primarily through informal but efficacious conversation with the adults in their lives.

What amazes me about Fairhaven is that there are that many parents willing to pay $6600 a year for the kind of self-directed education their children could experience at home absolutely for free.

April 26, 2006

If you've been following the comments of my last post, you know that we've been trying to nail down the identity of Jane's mystery mint relative. Theresa noticed its similarity to a wildflower Dawn was trying to identify.

These two weeds have led us on a merry hunt this morning. Alas, Jane isn't home today, so our chief botanist is missing all the fun. Here's what we have learned:

This plant, which my children have always called cow parsley,

isn't cow parsley after all.

I don't know where they came up with the name in reference to this particular plant, but it's been in use around here for years. They rejoice at its arrival in our lawn every spring, for they love to suck the nectar honeysuckle-fashion from its tiny orchid-like flowers.

Dawn's mystery wildflower appears to be the same plant, but when I looked up what I thought was its name this morning, I discovered that cow parsley is an altogether different plant (also called wild chervil).

In the course of the investigation, we happened upon a picture of Jane's mystery mint relative. (She knew it was a mint because of its square stem.) Here's her plant:

Rose can't wait for Jane to get home so she can tell her this plant, which grows in abundance in what used to be my south-wall flower bed, is called ground ivy. (Also: creeping Charlie, field balm, cats-foot, and gill-over-the-hill; officially Glechoma hederacea L.)

Jane has recently rediscovered her own journal—it's hard not to be wooed by the out-o'-doors this time of year, and to want to bring a bit of it inside—and I'm thoroughly enjoying her handiwork on pages like these (click photos to enlarge):